Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office issued a statement Sunday to address a video, circulating widely on social media, that shows the mayor and another woman in a heated exchange in a restroom the night before. The statement says Cantrell had stepped in to break up an altercation.
The 20-second video begins after the incident had already started and shows a woman in the corner of the restroom with her hand held up in front of Cantrell’s face. The mayor grabs the woman’s hand but the woman twists it free and brings it back up into her face briefly before shoving the mayor, who appears to grab her other arm.
Another woman then steps in to attempt to calm things down, while a voice can be heard saying, “She don’t know who you are.”
“Mayor Cantrell intervened to diffuse a potentially violent situation. Upon witnessing an altercation, the Mayor acted in a manner in which she always implores our residents: if you see something, do something,” Gregory Joseph, director of communications, said in a written statement.
A Twitter post that includes the video says it was shot at the Rob49 concert, which took place at the Fillmore New Orleans on Saturday night.
Another video posted shortly after shows the mayor speaking into a microphone to a group saying: “I wasn’t fighting in the bathroom, I was breaking up something.”
It’s not the first time video of the mayor in a public confrontation with a constituent has made the rounds. In September, Cantrell got into a heated exchange with a bar patron at the Windsor Court Hotel over evacuation decisions during Hurricane Ida.
